Sea-level rise is one of the major challenges for mankind in the oncoming decades. The final aim of our proposal is to contribute to the improvement of the estimates of the current contribution of glaciers to sea-level rise, and the prediction of their future contributions. With this aim, and limiting the scope of our research so its objectives become attainable, we will focus on
- developing techniques allowing to improve the estimates of ice discharge from glaciers to the ocean, combining remote sensing techniques, surface mass-balance observations, modelling of glacier dynamics and ground-penetrating radar measurements, using the South Shetland Islands glaciers, in Antarctica, as a test case, and
- carrying out modelling studies aimed to project the volume evolution, to the end of the 21st century, of land-terminating Svalbard glaciers under different climate scenarios.
A key aspect to achieve our aims is to better represent the glacier-ocean interaction. In particular, to complement the currently available iceberg calving model with a model of submarine melting at the calving front by the effect of ascending plumes arising from subglacial water outbursts. These processes have been shown to exert a dominant control on calving for many Arctic tidewater glaciers and cannot be ignored.
Similarly, the glacier-atmosphere interaction should also be better represented in the models. This will be accomplished by feeding the glacier dynamical models with meteorological data downscaled from regional climate model outputs calibrated against automatic weather station observations.
Another aspect that will be investigated is the relationship between the hydrothermal structure of polythermal glaciers, determined from ground-penetrating radar measurements, and the occurrence of short-lived events where a glacier can advance substantially, moving at velocities up to 100 times faster than normal, known as glacier surges.
To extend our research focus, giving it a multidisciplinary approach, we plan to perform, on Johnsons-Hurd glaciers and surrounding areas, Livingston Island, Antarctica, a combination of albedo measurements, chemical and isotopic analyses, and DNA- and RNA-based metagenomic analyses, in order to determine surface reflectance, total organic carbon, biomass and species composition of phototrophs, and the biodiversity of microorganism on glaciers. Genomic analyses will be followed by taxonomic and functional analyses, as well as comparative biogeographical analysis of the study site.
Other research themes will also be dealt with in the proposed project. They are mostly related with development of ground-penetrating radar equipment used for fieldwork and the effective processing and analysis of the corresponding data.